Loving the Wounded Warrior

by Adriana Anders

  And fuck if it wasn’t the best thing I'd ever tasted.

  * * *

  O’Neal

  “Jesus Christ above, Kurt Anderson.” I couldn’t quite catch my breath after that, couldn’t piece together what I was seeing or feeling. Fragments of that orgasm still flew around the tent, leaving everything black around the edges. Crap, had I passed out? Why did it feel like I'd passed out?

  He laid a soft, happy-sounding breath on my thigh, even though I knew damned well he hadn’t been the one satisfied in that encounter.

  I lifted my head just enough to say, “Your turn” although I did manage a glare when he chuckled low in response.

  “I’m good.”

  “Seriously?” I mumbled.

  His shoulder lifted in a shrug against me. “That was pretty good for me, too.” He sighed. “But I haven’t had a shower for a couple days.”

  “I want to—”

  “Another time.”

  Will there be another time?

  Oh crap. I wanted another time—a chance to give back just a tiny bit of what he’d given me. I never wanted seconds.

  He reached to put out the phone’s light while I yanked up my pants.

  My thoughts screamed into the dead silence that followed, urging me to invite him home. Just for a shower. And maybe another little taste of…that. Whatever that had been. Say it. Say it say it say it.

  We were so stiff and still in the suddenly cramped space that it was a miracle he couldn’t hear my unspoken words.

  “Better get some sleep. Big day coming up.” He flipped onto his side, facing me. The smell of sex hung in the air, and what we’d done sat like a wall between us.

  “Summit tomorrow?”

  He swallowed. “Yeah.” Out of the dark, his voice came, low and hesitant. “Know what you said about…holding me?”

  Something hitched in my throat. “Yeah.”

  “How’d you feel about trying that out?”

  I pictured how it could be: our naked bodies, warmly entwined. Could I even sleep in someone’s arms? It’d be sticky and close, awkward and much too intimate.

  “I’m not—”

  He nudged my shoulder. “Won’t bite.”

  Paralyzed by this new brand of intimacy, I waited for him to show me what to do.

  “Come here.” He lifted an arm in invitation.

  I hesitated. How messed up was it that this was harder than letting him put his fingers inside me?

  This is for him, I decided. Not for me.

  That made it easier to scoot up into his side, lay my head on his chest and wrap an arm around him. It was easier to fall asleep, too, with the warm man smell and the steady thump of a good, sturdy heart in my ear.

  5

  O’Neal

  * * *

  I awoke with a gasp. Where the hell am I? Where the—

  The tent. Kurt. The orgasm to end all orgasms and then…snuggling. I had the urge to hide my face at the memory.

  It was cold now, though. Like see-your-breath cold. And I was alone, jittery from whatever had just scared me awake.

  There. That sound. What was that?

  Another spurt of fear shot like fireworks through my veins. I lay frozen in the bag, listening hard, waiting for it to get closer. Thump, whisper, thump, groan. Over and over.

  It had a rhythm, steady, but frenetic, and so eerie it couldn’t be human. Or it shouldn’t. Which made it even worse knowing that it was Kurt. Doing what?

  I scrunched up my face and tilted my head to give one ear unobstructed access.

  It would have had an almost sexual bent to it, if it hadn’t sounded…demented. Or pained. Was he hurting himself? I pictured him banging his head against a tree. Was someone hurting him? Had he heard something, gone out to check, and been attacked?

  Crap.

  On the edge of panic now, I shivered my way out of the sleeping bag, snagged my coat and left the tent in a rush, almost falling out headlong, to find him—

  Burpees? Push-ups?

  What. The. Hell?

  And what was he saying as he worked himself to death? He was talking, or muttering something. Every hair on my body pricked up as I stood stunned, unnoticed as this man turned himself inside out.

  People didn’t do this. They didn’t show their messed-up insides to the world like this.

  But I wasn’t out in the world, and I wasn’t meant to be here. I shouldn’t be seeing this.

  He continued his grueling workout, naked arms glistening with sweat in the moonlight, while I stood immobile. What could I do? What should I do? Did I intervene and stop him or wait for him to notice me? Whatever fire pushed him to move like that, to speak in tongues, seemed blind to reality.

  Oh my God, was he crying? Those were tears running down his face. Or sweat. I had to stop him. Now. Before he hurt himself.

  “Kurt.”

  Nothing, no change.

  “Kurt, what are you… Kurt, stop. Please.” When he continued without pause, I edged closer to him. Should I try to touch him? This wasn’t my brother’s friend—the easygoing high school jock. This was a guy I didn’t know, not even the man I’d gone to sleep with a couple hours ago. What if he went ballistic?

  “Kurt! What are you doing? You can’t summit tomorrow if you don’t sleep. You’ll hurt yourself! You’ll kill yourself, you’ll die.”

  Though it didn’t stop him, his ghostly body slowed. Okay. Good. That was a start. I was close enough to touch him when he dropped down for another grueling round of push-ups. I lowered myself slowly to my knees and, after a brief hesitation, laid my hand on his back, right between his shoulder blades.

  He stilled.

  A million questions ran through my mind, What the hell are you doing? foremost amongst them.

  “Come to bed,” I said, instead.

  “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m alive.”

  Something prickled my neck, told me to back up slowly, but I ignored it.

  “I’m glad you are,” I whispered close to his ear.

  “I’m…Jesus, I’m not. Not glad.” The words sounded torn from him and I wanted to shove them back in. Don’t do this! I wanted to scream. Don’t unpack this here. Because I have no idea what to do.

  I shoved it all back. “Why not, Kurt?”

  “I don’t know how to…I don’t know who I am. I’m not the kid I was, not the football player, not the Marine. I’m…I’m useless. Pointless waste of breath.”

  As I scooted closer, my arm slid around his wide back. Wide, but lean. Too lean, like a man who worked his earthly shell into the ground because he could no longer stand to inhabit it.

  “You’re not,” I whispered, right against his sweaty ear. “You’re not a waste. You’re not.”

  “Bullshit.”

  And the thing was, what the hell did I know? What did I know about who he was or what he’d done? I knew he could dole out one hell of a climax, but that was about it. I had the feeling, though, for a strange, hushed cluster of seconds, that I was here for a reason and if I didn’t say the right thing, I'd lose him, this—whatever this was.

  I sucked in a wobbly breath, let him feel the weight of my head, and, on a wild kernel of inspiration, asked, “Who’s in the wheelchair, Kurt? Who are you pushing up the mountain?”

  I went with him as he bent his arms and lowered himself the rest of the way to the ground. It was damp and cold, but the moment was too important to worry about comfort. I'd never seen so much pain, never felt so far from another human’s experience, never been so keen to understand someone else.

  “Say bee oh.”

  “Say what?”

  “Eusebio Kline. Sebio for short.”

  “He’s a friend?”

  “More than that. Teammate. Brother. I failed him.”

  “He died?”

  Kurt nodded and started to turn away, but I wouldn’t let him. I grabbed his head with both hands, palms flat to his scalding cheeks.

  “No.
You look at me, Kurt. Look at me and tell me what the hell’s going on.” When he didn’t answer, I got closer, so close our noses touched, so close I could kiss him and make it all better. If this were some fairy tale. Instead I insisted, “I’m not letting you hurt yourself. Not on my watch.”

  Slowly, he ran his nose side to side against mine, his heating up the cold tip of mine in a slow, sensual Eskimo kiss.

  Something in his voice had changed when he finally responded. “Only person who tried to hurt me today was you. In that damned Subaru.”

  I huffed out a surprised laugh, barely kept it from finishing on a sob, and pressed my lips to his.

  “That was yesterday. You haven’t seen what I’ve got in store yet for today.”

  “You’re a menace.”

  I paused. “What happened to Sebio, Kurt? What happened to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Something put him in that wheelchair.”

  “An IED put him in the chair.”

  “What killed him?”

  “He did,” he whispered, almost too quiet to hear. “Shoulda been there.”

  “Where?”

  “Couldn’t stand being stuck in that chair. Should’ve known he’d do it. Went home to Phoenix, to live with his folks and… I knew the VA hospital wasn’t taking care of him—or he wasn’t going in when he needed to. They prioritize the problems they can see. You can get all the physical therapy you want, but when it comes time to treat PTSD, or depression, or whatever he had…” He gulped and I scooted close, molded my body to his, tried my best to meld with him. “He offed himself. Shot himself in the head and…look at me. Look at me.”

  He shook with silent, wracking breaths, strong enough to rock us both. It must have hurt him to let them out, to hold it all in so long. I wanted to reach in and soothe his soul, but I had no freaking idea how to do that. All I could do was hold him. All I could do was listen.

  “But it wasn’t you, right? You said the VA hospital? That’s a story right there. That’s what we need to tell the world. Vets being left to fend for themselves. Vets let down by our government. The very people they worked for.”

  “This isn’t a story, O’Neal. It’s a man’s life.” He was adamant, sounded almost angry, now, but at least he wasn’t falling apart.

  “I want to help, you know. I’d tell it from his perspective. This is exactly the kind of story I want to share with the world. The way our vets are left behind. This would be good for you. And I’d—”

  “No.” The word was final, decisive, and I backed down, with a wave of guilt. Oh my God. How could I let the journalist in me rise up at a time like this? “Bet you wish you hadn’t stayed now.”

  Shit, it hurt that he thought I’d regret being here. Did I seem so mercenary? Was everything I did for a story? Was everything meant to keep people at a distance? I opened my mouth to tell him that I hadn’t slept in his tent for his story…and closed it again.

  I hadn’t. But I couldn’t help seeing things from the perspective of a reporter, couldn’t keep those instincts down—even at the worst of times. Shame was sour in my throat. “I don’t know what to do right now.”

  “Nothing you can do, O’Neal.”

  I nodded and my eyes landed on the wheelchair.

  “What are you doing with his chair?”

  It took a moment to realize, when he started shaking again, that he was laughing this time.

  “Jesus, I know how crazy I look. I know, I know.” He rolled away from me, onto his back, pressed his fingers hard to his eyelids and shook with quiet laughter, wiping the sweat or tears away. When he finally opened his eyes and focused on me, he seemed like himself for the first time since I'd emerged to find him here. “We always said we’d climb the country’s tallest peaks. All of ’em. Sebio figured he’d wind up being a climbing Ranger, maybe work Rainier, and I just like big mountains. We were gonna do ’em all, on leave, and then as old men. We’d talk about it when we were deployed, you know? Reminisce about home and stuff. Just silly dreams. Stupid. Then we were both discharged. He lost both legs, I…” He pointed to his midsection, and I wondered what hell he’d gone through. “I had some pretty messed up surgeries. Lost some intestine.” He shifted away, all business now, and sat up, leaving me to follow.

  “So you’re hiking them without him? Is that the deal?”

  “Yeah. I…I was in DC. Just got a place and a decent contractor job and decided I’d take his chair on a hike, you know? Kind of symbolic. I took a weekend and drove to Virginia. Figured I’d do a quick hike up Old Rag, just to give him one last mountaintop.”

  “And then what?”

  “Couldn’t stop.”

  “So…you…?”

  “Didn’t go back. Never got my car from the lot. Never went back to my place. Never showed up for my first day of work.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah.” He swallowed. “Crazy, right?”

  I lifted my brows.

  “Hiked the Appalachian Trail for a while. Went south, first, to Georgia, ’cause it was getting cold out. Had money saved up, bank card, monthly disability. Buy new clothes when I need ’em. Get a hotel room every now and then. I’m just…a wanderer, I guess.”

  “You’re a Lee Child character.”

  “Huh?”

  “You ever hear of Jack Reacher?”

  “No.”

  “He’s ex-military, a vagabond. Walks around the U.S., sort of…solving crimes and protecting people and stuff.” I didn’t mention that the character had affairs as he went along. Or how sexy he was.

  “Yeah, well, I just climb mountains.”

  “When are you gonna stop?”

  He took a shaky breath and let it out. “This is the last one.”

  “There’s always Denali,” I half-joked, though I didn’t like the idea of him climbing it on his own.

  “You know I thought about it.”

  “Course you did.”

  I put a hand on his back, stroked him a bit, leaned my head on his shoulder and sort of urged him to give me some weight. “You can’t do this forever, you know?”

  “I know. I know.”

  “Where’s your family?” They should be here! I wanted to scream. They should be watching out for you! “Your parents and sister and stuff?”

  “They’re back east.”

  “They know where you are?”

  “They know I…freaked out. I check in to let ’em know I’m safe. Jared knows, too.”

  For once in my life, I wanted to stop with the questions. But for once, my questions weren’t for me. They were for him. “What happens when you stop, Kurt?”

  “Got no clue. No fucking clue.”

  I nodded and pulled him tighter. I'd regret all this closeness in the morning.

  “You still planning to summit tomorrow?”

  He nodded.

  “Better sleep then.”

  He turned to me, nudged my head with his, making my breath come in quick and hard. “Hey, O’Neal?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  I swallowed back a rush of fear and brushed off his words. “Didn’t do anything.”

  “You stuck around.”

  “For the wrong reasons.”

  “You sure about that?” No. “You still here to put my story in your newspaper?”

  Part of me wanted to lie. Making this about work would be so much easier. If this were anyone else, I could slip on my kind, but professional smile and comfort him from a distance. But I couldn’t. Not after he’d flayed me with all this raw truth.

  “No, Kurt,” I said, defeated. “I’m here for you.”

  He put his lips to mine in something that was so much more than a kiss. It was so much emotion, so much feeling that I couldn’t possibly begin to understand. I responded as I could, kissing him back with just as much fervor and possibly more warmth, and did my best to shove away the unbearable tenderness.

  I'd leave first thing in the morning. As with every other
one-night stand I'd ever had, I'd get up early, slip on my shoes, and give this mountain its first walk of shame.

  Except I couldn’t do that to this man.

  “I’m going with you tomorrow,” I promised just before we fell asleep a few minutes later.

  He did not object.

  * * *

  Kurt

  After some discussion, we stashed our packs and equipment at the campsite and summited late in the day, high and breathless in the bright, white sunlight, and all alone on the mountain. Alone, that was, except for Sebio, whose chair I carried folded up and strapped to my back.

  I planted the flag in the snow and worked to breathe around the spike in my chest. This is it, I told myself over and over. After last night’s meltdown, something had changed. I couldn’t define it, but I felt the shift. My ribs were still too tight, my head still a mess, but for the first time since I'd set off on this mission, I thought there might be an end in sight. Even if that end looked like the edge of the world.

  And beyond it was a gaping void.

  I slid a glance at O’Neal, whose strange blue eyes were hidden behind mirrored aviators, like mine. She was pretty much the perfect woman. All long limbs and free spirit. The woman drove around with climbing gear in her car, for God’s sake. And she knew how to use it.

  If that wasn’t dream material, nothing was. Not to mention the taste of her—but that was a whole other level. Would she give me another chance after last night’s fiasco? Could I tell her my secret? Would she let me—

  “What now?” she asked, flushed from the climb and the cold and probably from the harsh rays of the sun. Christ, I wanted to kiss her.

  “I need to release him.” I blinked back to reality.

  “What?”

  “Sebio.”

  Even behind her massive glasses, I could see the question.

  “Please tell me you don’t have his ashes.”

  “I have his ashes.”

  “Holy shit, Kurt.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good thing you’re an incredible kisser.”

  I have to work to hold back a smile. “Sorry.”

  “All right. Where is it?”